Keynote Speaker

Mike Maples, Jr. is the Managing Partner of FLOODGATE, and was recently named as one of “8 Rising VC Stars” by Fortune Magazine for his investments in business and consumer technology companies – such as Twitter and Digg. Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was an entrepreneur and operating executive who worked in a variety of senior management roles in high-growth companies. His background spans a variety of markets including consumer technology, small business, and the enterprise, and he has led various functions in product development, marketing, business development, and corporate strategy.

Showcase Champion

BreezyPrint enables users to print securely from mobile devices. Mobile printing is an exploding market, intersecting a category (productivity apps) grossing >$208MM annually with annual growth of 62%. Recent estimates from HP predict that over 12Bn pages will be printed from smartphones every year by 2012, and BreezyPrint is the only secure, cross-platform, enterprise-ready mobile print solution on the market. We support all printers and all major mobile platforms, and our growing, global partner network allows printing in thousands of locations worldwide. We launched on BlackBerry in April and have doubled our userbase every month since. We recently launched an Android version, our iOS and WP7 versions will launch this month, and we are conducting pilot programs with two Fortune-100 companies.

Runner-Up

micromobs is the easiest way to create and manage a group discussion online. There are over 300 million online groups representing an over $10 billion market for premium services. micromobs focuses on two core principles which are currently plaguing online groups – privacy and simplicity; with this focus micromobs enables quick group creation and high engagement within groups. micromobs launched our beta application publicly at the end of May and has seen a tremendous response from users and the press.

Finalists

InstantIMPACT: InstantIMPACT enables people to be engaged in the political decisions locally and nationally by providing a simple web application that allows users to track initiatives, voice their opinion, and connect to related advocacy groups. Advocacy groups spend $25B a year fund-raising, InstantIMPACT gives these advocacy groups a better way to connect to individuals that share their beliefs than email spam. Competitors focus on advocacy groups providing email marketing and CRM solutions to the organization; in contrast, focuses on individual citizens providing a simple way to engage with multiple levels of government and advocacy groups.

Next Play Sports: Next Play Sports creates mobile apps that take fantasy sports to the next level by allowing players to predict their team’s next play while watching the game in real time. Fantasy Sports is a $3-4B market with 30MM+ users. We provide an innovative new platform for fan interactivity that enhances the game-watching experience and provides an instant gratification you don’t get with traditional fantasy sports. Prototype of flagship NFL football app built.

Ohanae: Ohanae focuses on high assurance user-centric identity, addressing the technical and adoption challenge of how people can manage their own identity across the range of websites, ‘software + services’, and government agencies that they use. There are close to two billion Internet users worldwide, of which one billion online users are OpenID ready (Google, Yahoo, etc.). Ohanae pioneered the concept of Universal Cloud ID, assuring user identities while focusing on simplicity and value. Ohanae delivers high assurance OpenID with built-in data privacy protection and identity theft prevention for Web apps and ‘Software + Services’.

Pick1: Pick1 is a semantic aggregator of tangible poll results, providing real-time analysis on massive amounts of otherwise unexploited opinion data and thus creating value for users, advertisers, brands. The volume of global market researches last documented by ESOMAR was of $32,5 billions worldwide yearly, in the 2009 US Market Research and Public Opinion Polling industry was worth $15,5 billions. Pick1 (Doochoo’s product) merges the scalability of the Web with the accuracy of traditional polling, it gives to opinions on the web a social relevance through the ‘one head, one vote’ principle… a real-time global referendum 2.0.

ShowForce: ShowForce is a fast & effective way to find what you want, connect with people, and discover the best of trade shows & conferences. Attendees get to the right places faster, exhibitors get targeted traffic, & organizers open up a new revenue stream. The service helps exhibitors do targeted lead generation through CPA-based advertising. ShowForce is a platform for events that’s free for organizers (our partners). As a result, it benefits from wider distribution, better SEO + SEM, and positive network-effects. Also, attendees, exhibitors, and organizers all benefit from the service. The service is live on iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch.

Social Samba: SocialSamba enables television, movie and book writers/producers to script characters into a social network. Fans of these stories “friend” the characters and experience their fictional lives like they experience real people through Facebook. Our solution does for these stories what Zynga did for gaming – same Facebook market, same virtual goods business, but with characters that fans love. 9 of the top 15 “fanned” pages in Facebook are stories (potential customers) and only 2 are games. We are developing v1.0 and have 3 writers creating pilots for launch in Q4 2010. 6 more full stories will go live in Q1 2011, proving the business.

Swingvine: The $2.5B scrapbooking market helps people capture life in a meaningful way but excludes 70% of households due to adoption hurdles and costs ($2,000+ on average). We address this gap digitally in a sentimental, social, & universally accessible way. We capture memories (imagery, text, maps, other media) in a space that delivers sentiment via personalization & music, convenience via smartphone recording integration, and permanence via perpetual storage for family, children, & generations to come. We launched a self-funded early product this summer focused on mobile (smartphones now outsell digital cameras).

Tripping: Tripping gives travelers a safe and easy way to connect with local people. This is a $10 – $15 billion market comprised of travelers in North America, Europe and British Commonwealth countries. We’re taking market share away from our competitors by building innovative technology, creating strategic partnerships and integrating social media, location-based data and mobile technology. Tripping has thousands of users from 100+ countries and our growth will soon accelerate: we’re about to announce partnerships with the Grateful Dead, Ivy League universities, study abroad programs, international volunteer organizations and more.

The Founder Institute is the world's premier pre-seed startup accelerator, having helped launch over 3,300 companies across 180+ cities and six continents.

We help pre-funding entrepreneurs and teams build an enduring company by establishing a critical support network of local startup experts that are invested in their success, and providing a structured and challenging business-building process that has helped our alumni raise over $700M. Leaders of the world’s fastest-growing startups have used the Founder Institute to raise funding, get into seed-accelerators, generate traction, recruit a team, build a product, transition from employee to entrepreneur, and more.